


Cry Me a River, Sing Me a Song

by phoenixyfriend



Series: Girl Genius Soulmate AUs [5]
Category: Girl Genius (Webcomic)
Genre: F/M, Soulmate AU, death mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-31 11:18:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17848451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixyfriend/pseuds/phoenixyfriend
Summary: Tarvek knows a few things about his soulmate. None of them are good signs.





	Cry Me a River, Sing Me a Song

**Author's Note:**

> Anonymous asked: Um 18 Agatha/tarvek for the soulmate thing?
> 
> 18\. the one where whenever you get a song stuck in your head, it’s because your soulmate is singing it.

Tarvek figured out from the age of nine that his soulmate was going to be trouble.

There were two kinds of songs that got stuck in his head.

Half of them were Romanian, most of which were unfamiliar.

The other half were in the language of the Geisterdamen, words he didn’t know and feelings he couldn’t parse, but a shape to the words that he recognized as they slipped into his head and settled comfortably inside his mind.

_Hoyek shir min dukka dir_  
_Moc mokon mon mod mokon mon_  
_Hoyek shir min makir kyen_  
_Von hekir ven vek veli vir_

He hummed it once, around a Geister.

She’d started singing it softly under her breath, continued it even after he’d stopped to watch her, and asked where he’d heard it.

He’d said he didn’t remember, that he’d probably heard it in the village, and asked what it meant.

_Child of mine, young and strong,_  
_Be careful of darkness, be careful of song,_  
_The Goddess believes in us, and we in her,_  
_So worship her who made us all._

Tarvek didn’t like the song, but he said he did, and thanked her for the translation.

His soulmate either  _was_  a Geister, or the knew the songs somehow anyway.

o.o.o.o.o

The Geister songs faded, and by the age of twelve, Tarvek knew which city his soulmate was from. Some songs only belonged to one town, or had local variants, or simply were in the wrong language for anywhere else.

His soulmate had forgotten the songs of the Geisters, but they had learned the children’s music of Beetleburg, classroom songs about TPU and the alphabet and the history of the town.

Tarvek didn’t tell anyone.

He lied and said his soulmate was from Paris.

o.o.o.o.o

The songs were fuzzy, trailed off, went silent.

The songs were broken.

There was a muffled pain with every song, with every word, with every note.

There was a yearning grasp in every falter, every misstep, every sour slide.

There was something so very, very wrong.

o.o.o.o.o

When Tarvek was twenty-two, the songs became clear again.

By that point, he didn’t much care.

His sister was dying.

o.o.o.o.o

At age twenty-five, Tarvek had gotten a song stuck in his head, a Mechanicsburg pub crawl classic, the same single verse over and over and over again.

He’d followed the feeling, found Agatha in her piano room, singing as she tried to nail the rhythm of a Mechanicsburg stutterstep.

He wasn’t surprised.

He just joined in.

(It was nice to be sure, though.)


End file.
